This article is part of eBook. Please use the link at bottom to jump to the rest of the eBook...

Dow's ICM Model

When Dow decided to become a pioneer in the area of ICM, it realized it had to undergo a number of changes first. Unlike Skandia AFS, Dow was established in 1897 with a structured business model that to a great extent followed the old economy organizational models. Before implementing any new initiative, Dow had to make sure that its vision, structure, and culture would not defeat change. Fortunately for Dow, the culture was right with its long-term and his­torical commitment to management of inventions, with the first invention management group being formed as early as 1958, and the first patent department in 1928. Still, Dow lacked a vision to lead the IAM and ICM revolution, and the structure was rigid with too many hierarchical lev­els. To overcome these hurdles, Dow went through two major changes. First, Dow delayered its structure from 14 to 5 levels, from the frontline operators to the CEO. Second, it adjusted its vision to reflect its newly gained insight into the strategic importance of IC.

Dow's vision now included "creating value from our intellectual assets." This facilitated the perceiving of intellectual assets and capital as enablers of value creation and maximization. Despite the value of this new awareness, more than a progressive vision was needed. Visionary leadership, strategic planning, ICM champions, committed managers and employees, and effec­tive teams and programs were all necessary for the transformation. The vision and the excitement surrounding the potential value of IC inspired Dow's aggressive high-growth strategy - the New Value-Growth strategy developed in 1998. Under this strategy, Dow aims at increasing earnings per share by 10 percent, and to have 15 percent of revenue from products introduced in the past five years by 2005. Overall, Dow aims to grow revenue by 6 percent annually to reach $60 bil­lion in 2010. To Dow, ICM was not only the new way of doing business, but the vehicle for cre­ating and sustaining future value. Let's closely examine the programs that Dow implemented under each of the ICM stages.

The Knowledge Management Stage

Dow has a matrix organizational structure wherein each business group maintains its autonomy to a considerable extent. As a result, though the KM initiatives are led by the centralized (corpo­rate) top management, the extent of implementation, attention, and resources allocated to this ini­tiative is up to the vice president (VP) of each business group. Dow's KM system is led by the knowledge management director, who reports to the chief information officer (CIO), and super­vises a group of senior executives that form the KM Group. The KM Group is an 11-member executive team entrusted to manage knowledge across Dow's 23 businesses, with a budget of $15 million over 5 years. It is responsible for supporting the information stewards, who in turn cham­pion KM initiatives in each of the business groups. The information stewards report to the senior manager of the KM Group and to the VP of each of the business groups. They are supported both by the IT Department KM Program Office and the KM Resource Center, as shown in Exhibit 9.4. The main criticism made against the use of this model is that leadership's commitment to KM is sometimes diffused by the VP of the business group's decision to limit the role of information stew­ards.20 Some information stewards complain that KM is not given priority by certain VPs, resulting in their having two or three roles in addition to KM, spreading themselves too thin to effect the desired changes.21 Despite this, Dow's Greg Horvath, senior manager of the KM Group, praises Dow's model for the liberty it allows each business to adopt the desired change(s) at their own pace.

Given the extent of cultural and other changes that KM initiatives require, it seems prudent that the decision to adopt KM is left to the business group, according to its state of readiness and business needs. This, however, places greater pressure on information stewards to act both as leaders of the initiative in the business unit and agents of change for the whole organization.

Structure - Communities of Practice and IAM Teams. Dow's KM system evolved in line with its IAM teams, who operated so much like communities of practice (CoPs). They are formed to satisfy a strategic business need of capitalizing on IC in a defined area of technology from incep­tion through development to commercialization. At the same time, around 80 of the intellectual asset managers are full timers and act as champions for new IAM teams. At Dow, it is not about what you call it but about ensuring that an effective practice is implemented. As Jim Allen, Dow's KM director, explains, the term knowledge management may fall out of favor, but the practices and strategies of KM will remain "part of the basic strategy and culture of every successful busi­ness."22 This statement summarizes to a great extent Dow's approach to KM - keep it simple and effective by "get[ting] the knowledge from those who know to those who need to know."

The information stewards have formed a CoP that meets regularly to share experiences and best practices. This community is spread over Dow's 23 business units and global operations, covering services to 50,000 employees. Information stewards form their own committees as well, which meet on a quarterly basis to share knowledge and experience throughout the busi­ness group.

A Culture of E-Learning. Dow's commitment to KM and the value of employees' knowledge is reflected in many programs that are in place for knowledge sharing and professional develop­ment. Dow professes that it wants its people to have the "freedom they need to succeed," and hence fosters values of innovation, agility, and individuality. Part of this freedom is to provide employees with the knowledge resources for them to learn and develop. To that effect, Dow cre­ated the award winning system which offers online continuing education options to its employees worldwide. In 2001 alone, Dow employees completed over 315,000 courses. The e-learning system proved to be very beneficial in addressing employees' knowledge needs, improving morale, and saving over $45 million in training costs.

The Knowledge Base and IT. In building the knowledge base, Dow realized that there are three strategic components that their knowledge base should incorporate. These components include23:

1.      How do we work? (Relates to overall enterprise computing systems including the com­mon workstation and intranet)

2.      How do we make decisions? (Relates to KM, building the knowledge base, and con­necting employees for knowledge-sharing purposes)

3.      How do we connect to our customers? (Relates to e-business solutions and systems and the ability to tap into customer capital)

The most significant change that followed creating the patent database was the creation of the cor­porate-wide standard workstation. This is the basis of Dow's IT architecture as it incorporates stan­dard hardware, software, IT solutions and communication tools, and database management systems. This formed part of the knowledge base, which was developed to provide information to employees relating to the decisions they make, and based on their knowledge needs. The main focus is on shifting from "reporting to prediction" in the use of information. This is based on Dow's belief that to better mine its knowledge resources, information should be used to predict patterns rather than just provide retrospective data.24 To that effect a number of information retrieval and visuali­zation tools are provided, including but not limited to patent citation trees and KM tools.

The Innovation Management (IM) Stage

Dr. Herbert Dow, who founded Dow in 1897, managed the innovation process very much in line with Edison's model outlined in Chapter 7. In his career of 40 years, Dr. Dow obtained 107 patents, forming the basis of the first products that Dow made. Today, Dow is a global company with 50,000 employees; manufacturing sites in 32 countries; over 2,400 chemical, plastic, and agricultural products and services; and around $35 billion in revenue. Dow's IM system has evolved immensely from the Edison model to accommodate the network-based nature of innova­tion in the knowledge economy. Here's how.

Structure - Labs as Competence Centers. Dow arranged the skills and competence of its peo­ple across the various business units into competence centers where the skills of every person are known to the lab manager. On determining the critical skills needed for an innovation project, a central department undertakes the responsibility of bringing the right team together. Process ownership is assigned to a central department to maintain consistency and improvement of the process (stage-gate), while team allocation is left to the leadership of every business unit or lab. At Dow Polyplefyn Research Lab, for example, the Tactical Leadership Group is responsible for the management of the innovation portfolio, including team and resource allocation.25 The Group is made up of senior business managers and scientists. The joint business and scientific leader­ship is used to ensure a balance between administrative and technical considerations. The Group makes decisions as to selection and prioritization of proj ects, and then assigns a cross-functional, multiskilled team to each project.

The 42 Plus Alliances Portfolio. Dow manages external alliances as part of its innovation portfo­lio, with over 42 joint ventures and R&D collaboration agreements with universities, government labs, and independent R&D organizations. When the benefits of collaboration are clear (e.g., increased knowledge and speed to market), Dow does not hesitate to collaborate even with com­petitors. A prominent example of this happened when a research team discovered a process in 1994 to make ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) elastomers, which were already produced by DuPont and others. The process proved to produce high-performance grades with much lower manufacturing costs. The research team sent the samples developed to DuPont for testing and com­parison. On receiving positive feedback from DuPont, Dow decided it could complement its strengths with those of DuPont by working together. Instead of competing in an area where process patents are hard to procure and enforce, Dow formed a joint venture with DuPont to unite their R&D efforts to develop the high-value new process, keeping it secret from other competitors.

Innovation Culture and a Central Idea Bank. Being in a technological race, Dow's innovation strategies seem to be technologically driven. Dow has heavily implemented new innovation prac­tices and tools to perform patent and technical intelligence. Despite their technology-driven strate­gies, however, Dow incorporates employee-driven methods to empower employees, by fostering a strong culture of collaboration and creativity. To be true to its message that employees' ideas count, Dow established a central idea bank. Though the bank does not actively solicit ideas from employees, it takes those submitted to it from anywhere in the organization very seriously. The ideas are evaluated, filtered, and distributed to the various business units to which they are rele­vant. If the ideas do not fall within the area of a particular business or are not within the strategic plans, the ideas are then referred to the Business Development and Growth Unit for further con­sideration. In all cases, the idea originator has to be notified of the action taken within two weeks, and of reasons for rejection if the idea was declined. Near commented that in fact Dow's e-commerce business was a result of a noncore idea around which a whole new business was built.

This article is part of eBook. To read the rest of the eBook (full version) please look at: capital markets